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was the dark hour before the dawn, black and still and cold, when 9009, slipping the last severed bar from its place and laying it noiselessly down, wiggled out of his cell like a red-barred snake. A moment later he was outside the building, shrinking, a shadow among shadows.

He was in the upper yard. To his right was the “Stone Building” from which he had just emerged; to his left, across the yard, lay his old cell-house. Before him, a hundred feet away, opened the alley-way leading to the lower yard with its little garden, where were the warden’s office and the sleeping quarters of the guards. The left side of this alley was made by the second cell-house and the dining-hall; the right side by the line of outhouses. These consisted of the laundry, the cook-house, and bakery. Between them were narrow spaces, mere guts two feet Rh